It began with a mug,
plain, white, unassuming,
picked up from the thrift store shelf
for a dollar or less.
A small chip on the rim,
a scuff along the handle,
yet somehow, it felt like it fit my hand
better than anything new ever could.
It wasn’t just a mug, of course—
it became the center of mornings:
steam rising like a ghost,
a swirl of cream that bloomed
into galaxies of soft beige.
I drank everything from it—
coffee too strong,
tea brewed too weak,
even water late at night
when the world was unbearably quiet.
And one day, years later,
as I washed it carefully in the sink,
I thought of you.
How, like that mug,
you’d been there for so many mornings,
for so many evenings.
And though I would never
say this to you aloud,
afraid you’d laugh at the comparison,
I thought of all the things
you had held for me—
my weariness, my joy,
my tangled mess of worries.
You are better than a mug,
loved more dearly,
and I wish you saw it too,
that you are a better fit for me
than anyone new could ever be,
forever and always more like home,
with or without a chip or two.
There is the trilby-wearing soul,
who sits in libraries, his fingers
brushing brittle pages,
coaxing bones from the spines of history.
He almost finished writing a novel,
his hat tipped rakishly,
a witness to the changing Times,
forever a critic.
The man beneath the straw boater,
now tends to his garden,
his trustfund-life measured
by rows of tomatoes and beans.
Once a maestro of summer picnics,
sunglasses beneath a sweat-soaked brim –
fertile memories now disolved
into quiet afternoon lemonaid.
A cowboy hat, wide-swept,
adorns a retired traveler—
a man whose hands
remember reins and saddle horns.
Though the horses are gone,
his posture still echoes
bluffs brushed by the breath of twilight –
his hat, a relic of freedom
shading sun-creased eyes.
The bowler belongs to another—
an accountant wearing precision like armor
against chaos, tallying figures, balancing worlds.
On Sundays, he plays cricket,
his hat casting shadowed arcs,
chasing the jagged sweep of a stroke
before returning to the order of ledgers.
And then there’s the beret,
perched like a bird on a man with paint
on his fingertips, his mind still alive
with light and color.
The streets he sketched, a blur now,
but his hat remains – an artist’s signature,
a small rebellion
against the grayness of days.
Each hat carries its own history—
a baseball cap shielding a veteran’s face,
a homburg clinging to another century.
They carry these coverings
as reminders,
as anchors,
as badges of lives
fully and beautifully worn.
These fragile shapes—
pressed into silence like nails
into wood—hold nothing.
The ink dries,
the page itself knows nothing,
and still the emptiness waits.
I write not to remember,
but to listen.
Each word carries
the faint hum of something distant:
the voice of a child at the edge of the sea,
the soft click of a door
closing behind someone you loved.
The act itself is the prayer.
Not faith, not hope,
but a kind of surrender—
letting the words rise like smoke
from a flame
you can no longer see.
The river never stops.
It pulls everything with it—
even the weight of this moment,
even the sound of my inner voice.
But here I am,
still moving my hand
across this narrow light,
still reaching for something
just beyond what I can hold.
When the words stop,
it will not matter
what they meant.
The silence will remain,
its hands outstretched,
holding everything
I could not say.
The kitchen is empty now,
its warmth gone cold,
the table scattered with the wreckage
of plates, crumpled napkins,
a wine glass tipped on its side
like a tired apology.
I sit by the window,
watching the last scraps of daylight
sink into the blackened trees.
The neighbors’ porch light flickers,
an echo of laughter still clinging to the air
like the faint smell of roasting turkey.
We said grace earlier,
but no one spoke the word we meant.
Instead, we passed bowls,
sipped at brittle silences,
our small rituals
a flimsy bridge over the gulf
of old arguments
and long-forgotten debts.
Now it’s just me and the clock,
its hands moving steadily forward
as if to remind me
there’s no way back.
I remember once
there was joy in this day—
paper hats shaped like pilgrim caps,
sticky fingers clutching wishbones,
a pie cooling on the windowsill
while someone hummed a hymn
too quiet to name.
But the years have swept it all away,
replaced it with empty chairs
and the faint ticking of the past
beneath my skin.
Still, I whisper thank you,
to the night,
to the silence,
to whatever part of me
still believes the feast
was meant for the hungry
and not just the full.
Outside, the wind carries
the brittle cry of a single leaf,
its freedom too fragile to last.
The streetlights hum in the cold,
casting their pale halos
over the frozen world.
I walk past houses
where laughter leaks through the walls,
the kind I remember
but no longer know.
Each window is a postcard—
a tree dressed in lights,
a table spread with warmth.
Inside, a child leans close to a candle,
his face lit by something
I can’t name anymore.
The snow falls in whispers,
covering the broken sidewalk,
the withered garden,
my tracks dissolving as I move forward,
a ghost in my own skin.
The church doors are open.
I step inside and sit
beneath the towering shadow of the cross.
The pew is hard,
but the silence is soft.
Somewhere, a woman sings
of peace on Earth,
her voice wrapping itself
around the hollow ribs of the night.
I think of the star,
how it hung alone in the sky,
how it guided the lost
to something they could not understand,
but followed anyway.
This, too, is a kind of prayer:
to sit in the stillness,
to let the cold cradle my hands
as if the world itself
were waiting
to forgive me.
Outside, the snow keeps falling,
soft as breath,
quiet as grace.
